On the E3 show floor, I found Heroes of Ruin in a small section of the Square Enix booth. This game is an action-adventure RPG published by Square Enix and developed by n-Space. The game will support up to four player co-op both locally and online and will also support voice chat.

Players can choose from one of four different characters to customize. In the demo, I chose to play as both the Vindicator and the Gunslinger. The other two characters were unavailable. The Vindicator is a lion-like warrior that has some pretty cool customization options. You can change his “skin” from light to dark and have stripes or no stripes. His hair style ranges from a small to large lion's mane. As for the Gunslinger, I did not like the options I saw for hair style (e.g. spiked hair) and had to settle with what looked best. The best part of the customization in this game is that you can change your skin color from light to dark, and there are several color options to choose from (e.g. tan, light brown, dark brown). However, other than that, the customization options are pretty limited. There are just a few options for hair style, and you can only change the color of one part of your outfit.

After I customized my character, my character was put in a starting area to talk to some NPCs and gather some quests. As I ventured onward, I went inside a forested area with a few different types of monsters in it, such as giant spiders. The Vindicator and Gunslinger had different attacks, but the attacks available were pretty limited. The Vindicator could stun enemies by charging forward and slash at enemies with his sword, while the Gunslinger had a spread-shot attack and a more focused attack. Both characters could also block enemy attacks.

One feature that was pointed out to me was that Heroes of Ruin randomly generates dungeons and monsters each time, so every play-through will be a “new” experience. This will allow players to grind for more loot, but as I played this game a second time with the other character, the environment and monsters were about the same, and I quickly became bored.

Since this game has only been six months in development and will be released sometime 2012, there might be more customization and attacks for characters. Let’s also hope that there will be more variation between each randomly-generated dungeon.